//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2- Foal Tales 
// Story: Tale of Stars and Monsters 
// by Platypony 
//------------------------------//

	Spike was glad he had plans for tonight.  Usually reading stories to foals would be fairly boring for the young dragon, but with Twilight’s current state it was looking like a great way to spend the evening.

After Pinkie’s party the week before Twilight had spent a few nights studying the skies looking for a strange phenomenon, and she had found it every night constantly getting clearer.  Spike had to admit that it was pretty weird, a circle of red stars that would rotate around an unknown center.  Once she had verified that it wasn’t a trick of the mind after the party and had measured its growth rate she had started studying physics and astronomy texts like a mad pony.

As Twilight’s number one assistant, Spike had been the one drafted into fetching everything she needed.  At first it was easy, just books on theories and formulas, but as those left more questions she had started on historical texts where past astronomers had recorded their own studies.  It had all gone downhill from there.  As the books kept leaving questions unanswered, none had any mention of such an occurrence, she had started looking further and further into the past.  She had already read every astronomer’s recordings and was now into the times of the astrologers.  

She hadn’t slept in two days by this point, and Spike was on edge.  Luckily he had agreed to tonight’s story time at the party, he hadn’t been out since.  So it was with great relief that the drake walked into Sugar Cube Corner holding a large colorful book under his arm.

“Oh, hello Spike,” greeted Mr. Cake. “We weren’t expecting you for another half hour, Mrs. Cake is upstairs giving Pumpkin and Pound a bath.”

“That’s alright I was hoping to grab a cupcake first anyway. I’m starved!”

“Sure thing, Pinkie can you grab a cupcake for Spike,” the stallion called back to the kitchen.

“I’m on it!” replied a bubbly voice from the back.  A few seconds later a pink ball flew out of the kitchen door, spun around the two confused males, and then screeched to a halt next to them.  It then popped open in a burst of glitter revealing Pinkie Pie, holding a cupcake with topaz crumbles out to Spike.  After he hesitantly took it she pulled out a push broom, cleaning up the glitter.

Drake and stallion stood dazed for a moment before shrugging it off and continuing their business.  For Spike this meant sitting at a booth eating his tasty dinner and waiting for the twins to come down for story time.  He was joined by his pink friend after a moment.

“Hey Spike! I haven’t seen you or Twilight in forever.  What have you two been doing all week?”

“Hi Pinkie, Twilight’s been obsessing over some weird sky thing so I’ve been trapped in the library with her all week.  It’s nice to finally get out and do something besides fetching and re-shelving books.  Anything interesting been going on in town?”

“Nope, thing have been calm all week,” the cheery baker said.  She then started looking around and leaned across to Spike whispering, “Too calm if you ask me.”

“Isn’t calm a good thing?  With all the crazy things that have happened since me and Twi moved in I’d say that no major catastrophes makes up for a boring week.”

“Yeah, I guess so. That doesn’t mean I can’t think of ways to make things interesting, like a water balloon cannon!”

“Riiiiight, good luck with that . . . I guess.”  Spike then looked up at the stairs where a blue earth pony mare was bringing down two foals, one unicorn and one pegasus. “Looks like the twins are ready for some pony tales.”

He walked over to where Mrs. Cake was putting Pumpkin and Pound down.  “Hey little buddies, hi Mrs. Cake.  Are we all set for story time?”

“Yes sir, they’re clean, fed, and ready to go;” the mother replied.  The twins agreed in nods and baby babblings.

With his audience ready Spike pulled a chair over and sat down opening the book on his lap.  He looked through the table of contents to find something to keep both him and the twins interested.  He recognized most of them, including the tale of the “Mare in the Moon,” which had taken a large dip in popularity and had become a bit taboo after Princess Luna’s return.  Eventually he came across one he had never seen before and caught his interest.

“Hmm, for tonight let’s go with the Akhal-Teke legend about the ‘Beast of the Red Spiral’. Ahem . . .



	“Long ago, far to the East, there lived the tribe of the Turkmene.   They lived simple lives in the desert and in the mountains.  It wasn’t the most hospitable of places so they grew magically strong among all three races of ponies.  They also studied the land and sky in great detail so that they would know the best places to find and grow food and how to get back no matter how far they traveled by navigating with the stars to an accuracy of a few decameters.

“One day a star-mapper, one of the most important ponies in the tribe, noticed a strange anomaly in the night sky.  It was a red ring that grew in size every day.  Noticing that this meant it was approaching the world he alerted the tribe to the possible threat.

“They immediately set to preparing for a large impact that would cause a sandstorm of massive proportions.  They built a large wall around their homes, gathered large supplies of food, fortified the dwellings, and fashioned enough sand gear for the whole tribe. It was all in vain though.

“As the day of impact approached the red ring seemed to slow, until it stopped right above the planet.   Then as they watched the ring that took up the edge of the sky they noticed the horrifying truth, the red ring was a series of large eyes.  There above them was a massive beast that began to open it huge maw and suck the molten core of the planet out.  They could see rivers of fire flowing from volcanoes into its mouth and the ground beneath them quaked as the mountains began to split.

“While others would have huddled in fear the Turkmene began to plot a way to defeat the terrible creature.  They quickly realized that there was no time for an attack to fully defeat the beast; as such a thing would take decades, possibly centuries, to charge.  So they set a much more risky plan in action.

“Quickly half the tribe started to create the base of the spell to vanquish the monster, so that it could charge in their absence, while the rest prepared to cast the massive foe away.  As they finished they put the young inside the relative safety of the dwellings as the adults began the ritual to draw all the magical energies from all the three races out and form it into a massive spell.  As the spell finished it absorbed the ponies themselves and launched at the Star Beast, as the young would come to call it.  When it struck it launched the creature deep into s[pace and put it to sleep so that it would not be a threat for long enough that the true spell could charge.

“Days later the young of the tribe emerged from the houses and began to work on the pinnacle of the tribes works, a great maze protecting the runes of the Great Spell.  Eventually the tribe was absorbed into larger civilizations, but they continued to spread the legend of what happened so that when the Beast returned the spell could be activated by a great mage.”




Spike looked up from the book to see the twins had gotten bored and fallen asleep, but he didn’t care.  He recognized the red ring from the story.  He quickly hopped out of his chair said goodnight to Pinkie and the Cakes and rushed home to tell twilight about his discovery.